5 Proven Ways to Increase Confidence & Self Esteem
You’ve heard it before.
Heck, I’ve said it myself hundreds of times.
The key to increasing your confidence is working on your mindset.
But the truth is, that isn’t enough.
Sure, it works.
Sure, you’ll start to feel more confident.
Sure, it’s a start.
But if you want deep rooted self confidence, the type that sticks around when the shit hits the fan, you need to do a little more.
Here are 5 ways you can start to build up the deep rooted self confidence you need to achieve the success you dream of:
Hang out with confident people
If you’re scared to increase your prices, selling yourself feels uncomfortable and you’re struggling to find clients, stop hanging out with the people who are undercharging, shying away from selling and moaning about not having any clients.
We’re the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with so if all your time is spent with people who aren’t achieving their goals, who are complaining and blaming anything other than themselves for their situation or are judging others for the decisions they make, you’re gonna start picking up on their bad habits.
Now, that’s not to say you can’t connect with people in the same stage of their business as you. In fact, it’s helpful to have someone to hold you accountable. But you need to take responsibility for your own actions and being sucked into someone’s negativity or playing the comparison game won’t help you succeed.
When I launched as a social media manager and lacked confidence in my pricing, I made the decision to change who I networked with.
Surrounding myself with social media managers who charged £1-2k a month for the services, inspired me to raise my own rates and made me realise that if they could charge that much, so could I.
Choose who you engage with
If you’re working on your mindset, spending all your time growing your business and trying to develop successful habits, engaging in conversations that are anything but positive will undo all your hard work.
As entrepreneurs, when we talk about our goals, they’re often a lot bigger than the goals of our friends and family so instead of saying “Oh wow, that’s so awesome!”, the response is more like “But how can you do that?” or “That won’t work”.
Our instant reaction is to justify our dreams or to shrink them so they don’t appear so ‘outrageous’. This however, reinforces in our subconscious that we don’t believe our goals are possible and if I’ve learned anything in my two and a half years of business, it’s that self belief is crucial for success.
If someone doubts your dreams, change the subject, not your dream.
Whilst we’re on this topic, don’t get involved in the threads on places like Facebook where people are criticising, judging or ranting about a particular topic. Getting sucked into the bullshit will undo any mindset work you’ve already done.
Set boundaries for yourself
If you don’t set boundaries for yourself and make yourself available to your clients and followers on social media all the time, you’ll get sucked into the scroll, never take proper time off and become overwhelmed.
There are varying levels of boundaries you need to set.
Here’s an example of the ones I set for myself:
• No social media or email checking before 9am or after 8pm. This is a work in progress but I’m learning to be a lot stricter with it. Waking up and spending the first couple of hours focusing on me and my needs is a game changer and helps to reinforce the respect I have for myself.
• Communicating with clients via email and/or Voxer only (depending on what they’ve signed up for). I don’t like using Facebook to do business so once someone becomes a client, we move over to email support or - if they’re a 1:1 coaching client - Voxer support. I also set my hours as 10am-4pm and will respond to up to one email per day with a response time of within 24 hours. Without these boundaries, I’d be constantly dropping everything to respond to a client and then wouldn’t get the other tasks completed that’ll move me towards my goals.
• No work on the weekends. Again, this is a work in progress. Self care is so important not just to recharge your batteries but again, to reinforce that you love, care and trust yourself enough to take a break from your biz.
I also don’t have notifications turned on on my phone. I check my emails a couple of times a day and respond to messages/comments on social media a few times a week. I understand the importance of connecting and building relationships but too much social media leads to procrastination, comparisonitis and, for me, anxiety.
What boundaries can you set yourself so the focus is on your happiness and wellbeing?
Take action when you’re scared
Taking action creates confidence. More confidence means you’ll take more action...which’ll create more confidence.
There’ll never be a time where you feel 100% ready to do something. Whether that’s quitting your 9 to 5, booking a one way flight or increasing your prices.
Waiting until you’re ready means you’ll take longer to achieve your dreams.
At the beginning of 2019, I set myself a goal of launching a podcast. I was nervous because it was something I hadn’t done before and for months, I procrastinated. I wasted hours trying to come up with the perfect name, design the perfect artwork, map out the perfect episodes.
I didn’t feel ready and instead of just going for it, I got stuck in my own head.
By January 2020, I still hadn’t launched it and it was still on my goals list. I gave myself a deadline, announced to my audience that the launch date would be February 13th and started to take small steps to finally achieve my goal.
Did I feel ready a year later? NO! Of course I didn’t!
But I did feel incredibly proud of what I achieved and excited to finally have my show out there.
I couldn’t help but think to myself “Think of how far I’d be with this if I’d just taken action when I first wanted to”.
Invest in support
There’s an abundance of free information online. Which is awesome.
But sometimes it’s not quite enough.
Sure you could trawl the internet for hours and hours, searching for blog posts with actionable confidence tips in, or you could invest in a course (for example) that has everything you need to know about your chosen subject including proven strategies for actually getting you the result you want.
Let me be clear, you don’t have to invest in support if your budget’s tight. You can absolutely get to where you want to be by yourself.
But sometimes, courses are the quickest way to unwavering confidence.
Which is why I created my course.
The Confidence Course: Get What You Deserve is a 6 module, self paced course bursting with tangible techniques and practical strategies to help you create unwavering levels of self confidence and face the fears holding you back from the life you dream of. Learn more about The Confidence Course here.
If you do decide you’re ready for some support, be clear about what you want to achieve and work with someone who can specifically support you with that goal.
To recap, here are the 5 things you can do on top of your daily mindset work to create deep rooted self confidence:
Hang out with confident people
Choose who you engage with
Set boundaries for yourself
Take action when you’re scared
Invest in support
